Oglivy and ChatThreads just released a new study of restaurant consumers and individuals exposed to social content with varying degrees of cross-platform promotions. Their study found that individuals exposed to social content are significantly more likely to increase their spending and consumption than those who aren’t exposed.

This could also be a great way to increase holiday spending!

There was a 2-7x greater likelihood of higher spending or consumption depending on the media encountered by the study group.  The sales impact was most pervasive when social content was combined with other types of media such as PR, out-of-home and TV.

According to Irfan Kamal, SVP Digital/Social, Ogilvy:

“Much of the work to date has looked at direct channel impacts; for example, do direct clicks from a social media site result in sales?  This study of restaurant consumers attempts to understand the more complex factors that lead to consumer purchase and perception changes.  We found that in the real world, social content exposure – by itself and more broadly when combined with other types of media exposure such as out-of-home, PR or TV ads – is linked with 2-7x higher likelihood of consumption and actual spend increases.  And, social content exposure alone is associated with the largest shift in week-to-week brand perception.”

The more important point is that “Social content exposure alone is associated with the largest shift in week-to-week brand perception over all mediums.” We are talking about using social content to shift brand perception over a 7 day period. Social content drives the user’s interaction with their social graph. The social graph is extremely important to the social content and brand perception being shared throughout the web.

Remember, brand perception is the opinions and views of people other than you.

How do we best utilize this information?

Despite the fact the study was completed for the restaurant industry… we have taken away a valuable piece of data. Integration of mediums (whether TV, Facebook, or radio) is extremely more effective than running them separate of each other.

Example: If we are running a TV ad within a specific market, we need to also budget for a Facebook and LinkedIn ad spend in that zip code range.